Sean Michael Kerner

Google has started 2011 off with a rapid series of updates to its Chrome browser. Now with the second major release of the year, Chrome 10, Google is patching 25 security issues. Of those, Google ranks 15 as having a high impact. Those include memory flaws, such as a memory corruption issue involving with counter […]

Oracle continues to advance GlassFish, the open source reference architecture for JavaEE project it acquired as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems. The most recent update, announced this week, is GlassFish 3.1 Server and Open Source Editions; the first major updates to the platform since the 3.0 series debuted. In addition to support and […]

From the “Nefarious Netbook’ files: Canonical has decided to retire the Ubuntu Netbook Remix – as a named product. The Netbook Remix was a personal favorite of mine, as it made it easy for me to point my netbook friends at it, as an easy replacement for whatever OS was installed by default on their […]

Security vulnerability testing is getting a boost this week with the release of Metasploit 3.6. Metasploit Pro, the commercial version of the product, now includes new PCI compliance reporting capabilities. There is also a new Project Activity Report, which helps organization manage and track penetration testing activities. While there have been improvements to the commercial […]

Does the open source mobile community have a compliance problem? It just might, according to a new survey from OpenLogic, an open source services vendor. In a scan of 635 free and premium apps on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms, OpenLogic found that 71 percent were not in compliance. But as more and more […]

The open source Qt framework is getting new commercial support. Nokia announced this week that it is selling the Qt commercial licensing and services business to professional services vendor Digia. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Qt is the underlying open source framework behind the KDE Linux desktop and is also used as […]

From the ‘Should Have Been Called Vegas’ files: Fedora 15, codenamed ‘Lovelock’ now has its first alpha milestone available. This is a BIG release for Fedora in that it’s the first Fedora of the post Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 era, and oh yeah first with GNOME 3, SystemD and BoxGrinder. GNOME 3, including GNOME […]

From the ‘Hack Me‘ files: The annual Pwn2Own hacking challenge kicks off today, pitting security researchers against web browsers and mobile platforms. The HP TippingPoint sponsored event grows every year to include more platforms, though Linux isn’t among them. Pwn2Own will target IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome all running on Windows 7. Windows XP isn’t […]

From the ‘Define:Ocelot‘ files: The animal kingdom was never a big area of interest for me, but thanks to Mark Shuttleworth, I’ve been learning about all kinds of animals. The next major Ubuntu release is 11.04 codenamed the Natty Narwal and Shuttleworth has just revealed its successors name: the Oneiric Ocelot. What’s an Ocelot? Apparently […]

Western Digital is making a big bet on building its hard disk drive portfolio, ponying up $4.3 billion to acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST). John Coyne, president and CEO of Western Digital, explained that the acquisition would pad out his company’s silicon wafer fabrication and engineering efforts, and bring over top talent amid a […]

The number of new domain names on the Internet continued to move up last year, according to a report from Versign that pegs the 2010 total at 205.3 million. Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) said that total represents an overall increase of 6.3 percent or 12.1 million new domain registrations from the total for 2009. But the […]

Established companies like Juniper with a solid brand and a bevy of products already on the market run the risk of growing complacent. In a fast-moving sector like technology, that can be a death knell. But ask CEO Kevin Johnson about it, and he’ll tell you that innovation, and the inevitable market disruption it brings, […]